subprime

It’s late 2011 and we look back to 2007, and where we are now. Mortgages were at the epicenter of the financial crisis that began in 2007 and resulted in more than $2 trillion in writedowns and losses at the world’s largest financial institutions based on data compiled by Bloomberg.

Subprime, and the resulting crisis built up, exploded, and ruined the US economy. Risky lending imploded in 2007. Now we see more fallout, as RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday that the number of U.S. homes taken over by banks jumped 35 percent in the first quarter of 2010 from a year ago. In addition, households facing foreclosure grew 16 percent in the same period and 7 percent from the last three months of 2009.

In the United States, years before the so-called “subprime crisis”, various financial businesses existed to serve the needs of the middle class. Among those were Household International, Citifinancial, and Avco. Household International represented the Household Finance (HFC) and Beneficial Finance brands.

Austin Kilgore wrote an article about predictions from Deutsche Bank concerning the mortgage market and the financial position of homeowners. While we certainly saw mortgage blues on the horizon well before the summer of 2007, Kilgore’s article shocked even us.

The percentage of prime borrowers seriously delinquent on their mortgage rose 20.3 percent during the first quarter compared with the previous quarter. It was up 163.7 percent compared with the same quarter a year ago.